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There will be no Maidan in Minsk. Hence, no need for regime change. There was further a self-serving message to the West: do not support the opposition to try to kick out “the last dictator of Europe” or else there … Continue reading →

Moldova is a small republic located in southeast Europe between Romania and Ukraine and is the poorest country on the continent. Historically, it is a former Romanian province annexed by the USSR in 1940 following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and transformed into a Soviet Republic. It became independent in 1991 shortly after Ukraine declared its independence. Except for good agricultural land, Moldova lacks any other important resources. For Russia, however, Moldova and Georgia in the Caucasus region are the “gates of the empire” and thus geopolitically very important.

After the Smolensk plane crash, the speed with which the disaster became – not unlike Benghazi – relegated to “yesterday’s news” was stunning. An uninformed observer might conclude that what happened at Smolensk was but a minor incident…

David Satter (who happens to be an acquaintance of mine) has just been expelled from the Russian Federation. David is no stranger to the masters of the Kremlin. He has accumulated a long track record of annoying them. Having been threatened with deportation as early as 1979 for “hooliganism,” Satter left the Soviet Union three years later under a cloud in 1982.

Ridicule is probably one of the oldest tools in the arsenal of political warfare. Making fun of an opponent serves to both undermine his credibility, and even to provoke him into angrily over-reacting. One method to discredit one’s political enemies is to mock them as “conspiracy theorists,” thereby implying that the targeted group is paranoid and psychologically unbalanced. Such a tactic requires little to no intellectual effort and allows one to conveniently avoid addressing the other side’s arguments.

Memory is the most precious weapon to transmit our traditions, which includes the heritage of liberty. Hence, individuals, communities, and nations cultivate memories of triumphs and calamities to derive lessons from the past for today to march boldly into the future.